available dark [book review]
“Paved roads had long ago surrended to gravel tracks that disappeared into a desert of snow covered lava. Black spires like a forest of charred trees blotted out the stars near the horizon.”
This is the last book I read from my Amazon package: Available Dark by Elizabeth Hand. I cannot remember how I came to order it… Maybe a confusion with another fantasy author like Elizabeth Moon? Or simply because the story was taking place between Maine, Finland and Iceland?! Anyway, I read the book within two days during a short hiking trip to the volcano region of Central France. The plot has indeed a mesmerizing quality that made me keep reading further and further at ungodly hours. (With the help of an US jetlag.) It is original and intense enough to overcome the major difficulty that the central character, Cas, is far from sympathetic, from specialising in corpse photography to being almost constantly on drugs. But the construction of the plot and the introduction of the characters, always seen from Cas’ viewpoint, are well-done, even though the ending is both precipitated and unrealistic. Too many coincidences. The original setup of this novel is the Finnish black metal scene, with its undercurrents of satanism, ritual murders, and church burnings. Rather accurate judging from the wikipedia page on the topic! What I appreciated most was the description of the first impression of Iceland on Cas, when she landed from Helsinki. “The trip to Reykjavik [from the airport] was like a bus tour through Mordor. Black lava fields, an endless waste broken here and there by ruined machinery or a building of stained corrugated metal.” So I may consider reading another novel in the series in a near future…
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